


A Single Night Nobody Expected

by Anamakorga



Category: Escape the Night (Web Series)
Genre: 70's slang, AU-Novelisation Combo, Alternate Universe - Always the 70's, Angsty backstories, Cinnamon rolls, Dancing, Fluffiness, For a fic about watching your friends die, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I have a lot of fluff for you, Rosanna-Centric, Rosanna-Centric then Matthew-Centric, Saltiness From Everyone But Ro, Voting Your Friends Into Death Challenges: Fun For the Whole Family!, lots of death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 01:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19842346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anamakorga/pseuds/Anamakorga
Summary: Rosanna Pansino expected good things when she returned to her home town of Everlock, and yet here she is, trying to save it from an evil Carnival Master who seems intent on killing her friends in front of her. Rosanna is a team player, though. She's sweet and nice and everything you'd want in a real friend. Saving her town is going to take more than a friend, though. It's going to take everything she has, everything she is, and even that might not be enough.Ro grew up in the sleepy town of Everlock, and she loves it to death.Literally.





	A Single Night Nobody Expected

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. That's the sound Rosanna's heels make on the gravel road as she walks into the sleepy town of Everlock, dragging her suitcase behind her. She wraps her jacket tighter around her. It's a fluffy green thing with great big white floofles (as she likes to call them) at her wrists. The October air bites at her ears and nose, and as she shivers, she reminds herself that it's unquestionably better than London in the wintertime. 

She walks down the streets of the town where she grew up. She's spent nearly every day of her life travelling to new sites and seeing the world, but a part of her heart remains here in her hometown, with its foundationless buildings and hangouts that mostly serve as meeting places for people involved in suspicious activity. 

She loves it nonetheless, thanks in part to the person who's always kept her connected to the middle-of-nowhere locale: Matthew Patrick. Rosanna is a social butterfly - a phrase she loves because it gives her the image of her flitting along in a meadow somewhere with giant butterfly wings on her back and chatting with all of her friends. Matthew, on the other hand, is something of a shut-in, an idea of him enforced by his gloomy tone in the letter she takes out of her pocket and holds in front of her to check the address of the detective office she's supposed to be looking for. 

Matthew isn't a shut-in by choice - though, as she stops on the shady corner where he does his case-solving business, she'd take a second guess to that. The windows are blacked out, and the door is a grey wooden thing with a dull copper plaque reading MATTHEW R. PATRICK - HOMICIDE DETECTIVE. It feels just a little too formal, especially with Matt's middle initial on there. When she steps inside the tiny building, though, she can see the dusty shelf of trophies: STATE THEATRE CHAMPIONS 1967-1972, CHESS TOURNAMENT WINNER 1964, SPELLING BEE CHAMPION 1959, and a dozen others proclaiming academic and theatrical accomplishments he's too proud to let go of. 

The interior of the building is just as shabby and worn as the outside. The walls are a peeling beige patterned wallpaper, while the wooden ceiling looks as though it could collapse at any moment. The light flickers above her in its cloudy glass case. The room iself is something of a waiting room, which Rosanna seriously doubts Matt needs. For as shady as Everlock seems from the outside, the number of murders is still very low. That explains away the ratty conditions of the bench and chairs pressed up against the wall of the room, and the many scratches in the finish of the desk in the center. She sits herself down in a chair, propping her blue and black suitcase up beside her. 

“Hello?” She says, cupping her hands around her mouth as though it would be harder to hear through the door to the back room, which looks thin enough to be knocked over by a light breeze. 

"Who is it?" Matt calls from the back room. "I'm kind of busy right now, you know." 

"I can come back later," Rosanna offers. 

“Ro?” Matthew asks, opening the door and sticking a head of brown hair out. His face lights up as soon as she confirms it, and his face splits into a wide grin. "I didn't expect you until next week! What are you doing here?” 

“Oh, I may have fudged the truth just a little bit to surprise you." Rosanna laughs. 

“I can’t believe you’d fake me out about the time you're coming back.” Matthew puts a hand over his heart in a mockery of hurt. “And I trusted you!” 

“Fool that you are." Ro says, batting at his arm playfully. 

“If I had known I would have told you about the carnival.” Matthew says, his voice taking on a more conversational tone. “It’s in town this week. It would have been gone by the time you got here, so I didn’t think I should, but here you are, so- there you have it!”   
“We should go!” Ro chirps, jumping up and down in circles. “Come on, Matt, it’ll be fun!” 

“Actually, I’m going with another one of my friends tonight, so I’ll have to ask her.” 

“Ooh, what’s her name?”   
“Safiya Nygaard. She’s an investigative journalist for _The Everlock_ _Chronicle._ She did a story on one of my cases a while back.” 

“Oh, that’s sick! Anywho, I’ve got to go rent a motel room or something out for the next few weeks soon. I just thought I would stop by, see what you’re up to, you know?” 

“Of course.”   
“Bye Matt!” Ro says, skipping out the door. 

“Bye, Ro.” Matthew says, but she’s already gone by then, down the street past dingy old mustangs and rusty Pontiacs. The sky is grey, though there’s not a cloud in sight, and the October air has a chilling coolness to it that seems to envelop everything around her in a blanket of sleepy dullness. Rosanna is the only one out on the streets, a beacon of color in the monotone town. A mother ushers a gaggle of children from a grocery store as she passes, and Rosanna grins. Adorable. 

She heads off onto a side road, and the gravel crunches beneath her again. She mimics the noise. “Rtch. Chrs. Rtch. Chrs.” She laughs and scampers up to what is maybe the biggest building in town – a lime green three-story motel with rough stone railings up its stairs that Ro makes the mistake of dragging her hand against. 

When she gets to her room, she props herself down on her bed, tosses the newspaper she’d picked up on the way here onto her nightstand, and takes in the smell of Everlock. It feels like forever since she’s been back here, and even with the sleepy atmisphere that she would usually find boring, Everlock feels like her home, and she can’t find it in her to dislike anything about it. 

She leaves the room again a little while later, still wearing her green jacket but having unpacked, and without glancing again at the newspaper, something Rosanna would come to regret later as another copy was shown to her, for printed on the front in big black letters were four simple words that could have quickened her demise. 

THE CLOWNS HERE KILL. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, here it is. The AU nobody asked for, where all of our favourite YouTubers aren't YouTubers because they grew up in the 70's. Yay!
> 
> About season 4:  
> I'm incredibly worried for Rosanna. She's absolutely a team player and absolutely a valuable member of the group, but at the same time she's very soft, and in this season we have Alex and DeStorm, who aren't about that AT ALL. (Then DeStorm voted her into the challenge because he "knew nobody else would"? What? That's not a valid reason! THAT'S NOT A VALID REASON AT ALL!  
> Tim though. Tim's in danger. He's not doing anything, at least not that they're showing us, and, uh, he has been CALLED OUT on it, so he better step up his game before they do anything drastic.  
> Season 4 tangent aside, have a lovely day!


End file.
